


Changes Made

by purpleeyesandbowties



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Set during ep 97, Veth’s Transformation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-10
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:00:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23085175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleeyesandbowties/pseuds/purpleeyesandbowties
Summary: A short look into some changes made in the time when Nott became Veth.
Relationships: Nott/Caleb Widogast, Veth Brenatto/Yeza Brenatto
Comments: 3
Kudos: 50





	Changes Made

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [transmogrification](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23042785) by [jaspell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaspell/pseuds/jaspell). 



> This is partially inspired by jaspell’s fic, transmogrification, and partially my ongoing impulse to project my complex feelings about motherhood and personal autonomy onto characters I identify with. You can find me on tumblr at sidras-tak or brenthebrave!

Veth emerged, healthier, happier, whole. But not exactly as she used to be. Some changes were obvious—her tattoos, shimmering bright blue against the lush darkness of her skin. A piercing in her ear, one that Nott had gotten on a drunken dare and an asinine desire to like something about her new body. It had been shiny and a choice she made for herself, and so she kept it as a reminder. She kept a handful of scars, but not all of them. The first time she took a knife for Caleb: a thin silver slash on her shoulder, carving down to her sternum. The hand-shaped burn on her chest from Jester’s revival in the Happy Fun Ball. One shot from her own crossbow in her thigh, a reminder to be more careful in the heat of battle. 

Other changes were below the skin, unknowable and unseeable. Things that she mentally asked Caleb to see as she saw them. She straightened out the curve in her spine that had caused her pain throughout her childhood, mended the torn ligament in her knee that hadn’t healed right, in the time between her escape from the goblins and her death. Selfishly, she slipped in a request to fix her toenails, which always had a tendency to grow into the tender flesh around them. 

And there was one more change. 

Veth loved her son. Though it did not come naturally to her, she loved being a mother to him. But she was an adventurer and that came with certain dangers. She was also a woman who enjoyed sex, and loved her husband, and wanted to love him as many times as he would let her. That came with certain dangers, too. But an adventurer, a woman who ran from and into danger, who suffered poison and bloody wounds, who died springing traps hidden in chests, could not face the intersection of these two dangers. There could be no more Lucs in her future. Not when she needed to keep her family safe. So she quietly guided Caleb’s mind to an intimate place and together, they took away the thing that made it possible. 

Guilt flashed through her, hot and stinging, wishing she could have told Yeza but knowing it was too late now.

Caleb’s mind supplied reassurance, sympathy, and warm, enduring love. He understand what she needed to do, and why, and how. In that moment, when their minds were connected, she loved him so fiercely she could hardly breathe—or perhaps the breath was taken from her by the clay tightening around her form. His mind slipped away, occupied by the increasing difficulty of the ritual, and Nott-soon-to-be-Veth quietly mourned the babies she would never have. She used to dream, as a goblin, of being a mother again. Her separation from Luc burned like the worst kind of fire, like a poison under her skin, like bad whiskey in her gut. Knowing he was growing, changing, living without her and forgetting her face every day he grew older stung more than any wound ever could. In her loneliest moments, she considered seeking out another goblin to make a baby with, just to feel a connection with another living creature. To nurture and care for someone who relied on her. To use her disgusting body to make something beautiful and pure. 

She hadn’t. She’d been captured and thrown in jail, and then met a man who needed nurturing and guidance and love, even as he shied away from her gaze. And that had kept her busy enough that the thought of a baby had been pushed out her mind. (Other thoughts of other babies crept in, later, as she fantasized about his face in the moonlight. Another impossible wish and one that she wouldn’t want to act on, even if it the laws of nature could let it happen—which they couldn’t. Even if she was a halfling, she doubted she could carry Caleb’s baby; worse was to know was that he wouldn’t want it, or her, even if it could be done). 

Fantasies had been fantasies and now they would stay that way. Veth emerged from her bindings of clay and magic to find herself, healthy, happy, and whole. Some things missing, others added on, but complete. As she hugged Caleb, then Luc, then Yeza, she knew that some sacrifices were worth the gains found on the other side. 


End file.
